The Girl With the Golden Eyes (11 page)

“Henri,” his companion said to him, “we are betrayed.”

“By whom, my good Ferragus?”

“They are not all sleeping,” the leader of the Devourers replied: “Someone in the house must not have eaten or drunk. Look at that light.”

“We have the map of the house; where is it coming from?”

“I don’t need the map to know,” Ferragus replied; “it comes from the Marquise’s room.”

“Ah!” de Marsay cried. “She must have arrived from London today. This woman wants to catch me in my revenge! But, if she has anticipated me, my dear Gratien, we will hand her over to justice.”

“Listen, then! The thing is done,” Ferragus said to Henri.

The two friends listened, and heard weak cries that would have softened the heart of tigers.

“Your Marquise didn’t think the sounds would come out of the chimney,” the chief of the Devourers laughed, like a critic delighted at discovering a fault in a fine work.

“We alone, only we can foresee everything,” Henri said. “Wait for me, I want to go see what’s happening up there, so I can find out how their household quarrels are conducted. Good Lord, I think she’s having her cooked over a slow fire.”

De Marsay nimbly climbed the staircase he knew and discovered the path to the boudoir. When he had opened the door, he had the involuntary shiver that the sight of bloodshed causes even the most determined man. The spectacle that presented itself to his eyes had for him more than one cause for surprise. The Marquise was a woman: She had calculated her revenge with that perfection of perfidy that is the sign of weak animals. She had hidden her anger to assure herself of the crime before executing it.

“Too late, my beloved!” the dying Paquita said, her pale eyes turned towards de Marsay.

The Girl with the Golden Eyes was expiring drowned in blood. All the lit torches, a delicate perfume that could be smelt, a certain disorder where the eye of a fortunate man would recognize the mad whims common to all passions, showed that the Marquise had expertly questioned the
guilty one. This white room, where blood stood out so clearly, betrayed a long struggle. The bloody prints of Paquita’s hands stained the cushions. Everywhere she had clung to life, everywhere she had defended herself, and everywhere she had been struck. Whole strips of the cinnamon-colored hangings had been torn out by her bloody hands, which must have struggled for a long time. Paquita must have tried to climb up to the ceiling. Her bare feet had left prints along the back of the divan, on which she had no doubt climbed. Her body, torn to shreds by her executioner’s dagger, showed how single-mindedly she had fought for a life that Henri had made so dear to her. She was lying on the ground, and, as she was dying, she had bit the muscles of the instep of Mme de San-Réal, who held in her hand a dagger soaked in blood. The Marquise’s hair was torn out; she was covered with bites, many of which were bleeding; and her torn dress showed her half naked, her breasts scratched. She looked sublime. Her greedy, furious head gave off the smell of blood. Her gasping mouth remained half-open, and her nostrils weren’t wide enough for her gasps. Certain animals, when enraged, leap on their enemy, kill it, and, calm in their victory, seem to have forgotten everything. There are others who circle around their victim, who guard it, afraid someone might
come and take it away, and who, like Homer’s Achilles, circle around Troy nine times, dragging their enemy by the feet. That is how the Marquise was. She didn’t see Henri. First of all, she was too aware of being alone to fear witnesses; plus, she was too drunk with hot blood, too animated by the struggle, too exalted to see all Paris, if the city had formed a circle around her. She wouldn’t have felt lightning. She hadn’t even heard Paquita’s last sigh, and thought she could still be heard by the dead girl.

“Die without confession!” she said to her; “go to Hell, monster of ingratitude; belong to no one but the devil. For the blood you have given him, you owe me all of yours! Die, die, suffer a thousand deaths, I’ve been too kind, I just took a little while to kill you, I could have made you suffer all the torments you pressed on me. I will live! I will live unhappy, I am reduced to loving no one but God!” She contemplated her. “She is dead!” she said to herself after a pause, coming violently back to herself. “Dead! Ah! I will die of suffering!”

The Marquise wanted to throw herself on the divan, overwhelmed by a despair that took her voice away, and this movement allowed her to see Henri de Marsay.

“Who are you?” she asked him, running to him with her dagger raised.

Henri stopped her arm, and they could thus contemplate each other face to face. Horrible surprise made frozen blood flow in the veins of both of them, and they trembled on their legs like frightened horses. In fact, two twins couldn’t have resembled each other more. They both said the same thing: “Is Lord Dudley your father, then?”

Each of them nodded in the affirmative.

“She was faithful to blood, at least,” Henri said, pointing at Paquita.

“She was as free of guilt as possible,” Margarita-Euphémia Porrabéril continued, throwing herself on Paquita’s body and letting out a cry of despair. “Poor girl! Oh! If only I could bring you back to life! I was wrong, forgive me, Paquita! You are dead, and yet I live! I am the unhappiest woman there is.”

At that instant the horrible face of Paquita’s mother appeared.

“You’re going to tell me you didn’t sell her to me so that I could kill her,” the Marquise cried out. “I know why you’re coming out of your den. I’ll pay you for her twice. Be quiet.”

And she went to get a bag of gold out of the ebony wardrobe, scornfully throwing it at the feet of this old woman. The sound of gold had the power to outline a smile on the motionless physiognomy of the Georgian woman.

“I’ve come just in time for you, my sister,” Henri said. “The law will ask you.…”

“Nothing,” the Marquise replied. “One single person knew about this girl. Christemio is dead.”

“And this mother,” Henri asked, pointing to the old lady, “won’t she want a ransom for her?”

“She comes from a country where women aren’t human beings, but things with which you do what you want, things that are bought and sold, things that are killed—things used only for your whims, the way you use furniture here. In any case, she has a passion that makes all other passions give in, and that would have annihilated her maternal love, if she had loved her daughter; a passion …”

“Which one?” Henri said impatiently, interrupting his sister.

“Gambling; may God keep you from it!” the Marquise replied.

“But who are you going to get to help you,” Henri said, pointing to the Girl with the Golden Eyes, “to remove the traces of this fantasy, so that the law won’t prosecute you?”

“I have her mother,” the Marquise replied, pointing to the old Georgian woman, to whom she made a sign to stay.

“We will see each other again,” Henri said, thinking about his friends’ anxiety, and realizing the necessity of leaving.

“No, my brother,” she said, “we will never see each other again. I am going back to Spain to enter the convent of Los Dolores.”

“You’re still too young, too beautiful,” Henri said, taking her in his arms and giving her a kiss.

“Farewell,” she said, “nothing can console me for losing what seemed to us both the Infinite Being.”

Eight days later, Paul de Manerville met de Marsay at the Tuileries, on the terrace of the Feuillants.

“Well then, what’s become of our beautiful Girl with the Golden Eyes, you big rascal?”

“She died.”

“From what?”

“Her chest.”

Paris, March 1834—April 1835